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Sarah Sachs is Tome's newest engineering leader who oversees our machine learning and infrastructure teams. Her focus is on building cutting-edge systems that provide high-quality AI experiences for millions of professionals. 

We sat down with Sachs to learn more about how generative AI is core to Tome’s building principles and how the team plans to incorporate deeper personalization across enterprises. 

Tome: When it comes to engineering and generative AI at Tome, what are you most excited about working on?

From an engineering standpoint, I’m really excited that generative AI is a core principle of Tome. Generative AI is a tool that’s accessible to everyone, but engineering organizations are still working on how to build for that. LLMs (large language models) offer a new schema of speaking between systems and move so quickly. How do you build an engineering infrastructure that can keep up, maintain your product’s quality, and lets you quickly iterate?

We now have the technology to learn more and use it in a way that helps our users. Tome has a great opportunity to help people get started making work faster and communicating their ideas without getting too fixated on form.

Tome: What did you work on before joining us?

I led the generative AI and natural language processing teams for the machine learning groups at Robinhood. As we were developing generative AI internally, I adhered to the principles of efficiency—there’s so much work to do in generative AI from that perspective, and figuring out how to help people get done what they actually 

Before Robinhood, I worked on personalization at Google. I learned many good lessons, including how to build robust pipelines that are safe and secure. I also learned how to extract beautiful insights in a way you can’t without the scale of a huge engineering enterprise. It’s something I’m excited to see Tome digging into as well.

Tome: Can you share what you find most impressive about the engineering work being done at Tome?

: From a technical viewpoint, I see such value in what the machine learning and infrastructure teams are building at Tome. There is so much green field from a development perspective when it comes to generative AI. When we say we’re an AI-native product, that’s not just a tagline. AI is integral in everything we do and how we develop. English is the new programming language.

Tome is a company that prioritizes generative AI as a core business value prop. As an engineering leader, that is a total gift, and also one of the most impressive things that you can work on in this industry right now.

Tome: How are you thinking about personalization in engineering from an enterprise perspective?

: Something I’m excited about here at Tome is thinking about how we can make a tool not just for individuals to share ideas, but for groups of people on a larger scale. How do we help teams work together and reduce the friction that can come from collaboration? Can we change the culture around how we share ideas? This is very rich ground to tap into on a deeper level.

When it comes to contextual understanding, we have so much power from which to build on. Generative AI is powerful because it takes general knowledge and applies it to a specific context. There are so many places in different enterprises and teams where that context is very specific. 

I’m excited to figure out how we expand into helping enterprises use Tome and make it so teams can clearly, effectively, and beautifully share their ideas and collaborate.

Sarah Sachs

Director of Machine Learning and Infrastructure, Tome

Tome: What is top of mind for you when it comes to building an effective engineering culture?

: Having a culture where everybody is able to bring their best selves to work and freely express their opinions is key. Being able to collaborate and learn from each other in a low-ego environment with the shared mission of doing what’s best for the company, the team, and doing what’s best for our customers are all factors I keep top of mind.

It’s easy to take that for granted, particularly at later stage companies where poor culture can be hard to reverse. I’m grateful that every day at Tome, in every meeting we have, we’re thoughtful about why 

 we’re doing what we’re doing, and ensuring everyone in the room is aligned and supportive of one another.

 to learn more about the people behind the page. For more on what’s new with Tome, bookmark the 

How Tome's Head of Machine Learning, Sarah Sachs, Thinks About Generative AI and Eng Collaboration

Meet Archana Sankaranarayanan, who joined Tome to lead product engineering. Archana leads our growing team of world-class product engineers who are focused on exploring new ways to use AI for idea creation, and building polished narrative-centered content for work.

We sat down with Archana to hear why she’s excited about Tome, where she thinks generative AI is headed, and what helps foster innovative, strong engineering teams.

Tome: Tell us more about what brought you to Tome?

It's an exciting time to work with this incredible team. When I used Tome for the very first time, I was thoroughly impressed by the UX, the polish, and fit and finish that you got right off the bat using the product.

As I started using Tome more and more, I realized that I was focusing less on the medium itself, and more on the content that I was creating, and on the ideas I was trying to express. That was absolutely fascinating to me, and from there, I was fully on board.

Tome: Can you share more about your work previous to Tome?

I led the engineering team responsible for Google Assistant, an AI-powered virtual assistant. I got to work specifically on the human-bot interaction aspects of Google Assistant—defining the tone, character and personality of the assistant.

Prior to that, I built content discovery and tagging software at Netflix, and scaled the engineering team at Open Sea, the world’s first and largest web3 marketplace for NFTs.

Generative AI continues to be an evolving topic of conversation. What are your thoughts on the future of AI as a whole?

: Generative AI allows for a new computing paradigm so to speak. The possibilities are limitless. We can automate ways of doing things that previously only humans could do. That said, automation is still rough around the edges and there are definitely issues when it comes to quality.

I think one compelling question is, How can we get to a place where the tech can resemble a human being generating versus an AI generating? To me, that's what's absolutely fascinating to sink our teeth into in terms of engineering.

Tome: Where do you think we are today when it comes to AI specifically with regards to the user experience and user interfaces?

: When it comes to both UX and UI today, we interact with chatbots, and that’s just the beginning. The interplay between generative AI and what's possible with UX patterns is enormous.

Getting to be a part of that, particularly right now, is very, very intriguing to me. You know, I hope it intrigues a lot of engineers out there, and that it also gets design and product folks excited.

Why? Because collectively, we get to shape this vision of how we can create and enable many interaction patterns. How humans interact with computers is going to fundamentally change, and go well beyond the chatbot UI of today.

There's so much room for us to explore and push the boundaries on what we can do with engineering. The opportunity is incredibly expansive. There's a place for literally every discipline within the product engineering and design communities to come and shape, and make meaningful contributions.

Archana Sankar

Director of Product Engineering, Tome

Tome: What is your outlook on building strong engineering teams?

: First, I've been so impressed with the engineering quality here at Tome—it's top notch. Secondly, it’s refreshing to see how the engineers are hyper-focused on the user experience. Engineers are also super passionate about having AI be an abstraction layer where it's more natively enabling the product experience, rather than it being a wrapper on top. I think it’s quite inspiring.

The blistering pace at which this industry is moving and advancements to generative AI makes it critical for engineers to keep abreast of what the community is up to. Participating in regular hackathons and conducting quick demos regularly that bring people together is crucial. Sharing our experiences and what we’re learning is a huge part of building and maintaining a strong engineering culture.

Meet Archana Sankar: Product Engineering Leader at Tome

Since launching generative storytelling at the end of last year, we’ve been thrilled to see how millions of storytellers from all over the world have used Tome to share product designs, create lesson plans, close new customers, raise funding, and so much more.

We’ve heard that you want a limitless creation and sharing experience in Tome so you can continue to unleash your best ideas and work. So today, we’re excited to bring you an exciting series of improvements as part of our new Tome Pro plan.

For power creators, entrepreneurs, and teams

Our Pro plan is designed to give every type of storyteller an unconstrained creation and sharing experience in Tome. You’ll never have to worry about running out of AI compute credits, and you can add custom branding to make your story authentically yours.

With the Pro plan, you’ll get everything available in Tome today, plus:

so you can always create and refine narratives that match your brand

 to create as many compelling narratives with data insights and more

 with dynamic logos and the ability to turn off Tome branding so your stories capture your brand and identity

 for those moments when your old-school client or professor asks for your work in an outdated format

to customize your tome to match your brand

so you can create in your brand's preferred typeface

so you can see who's viewing and engaging with your work

so you can get faster AI creation abilities with unlimited credits

 so you can get assistance when you need it

The Pro plan is available now on desktop. Simply go to your account settings, and then go to 

We custom-build our enterprise plans for large organizations that need advanced security and workspace controls, intelligent integrations with your data, and a dedicated customer success team. Get in touch with us if you’re interested in learning more.

Our free plan still gives individuals the same creation and sharing experience you’ve come to know and love in Tome. We’re committed to maintaining a robust free plan in Tome, so you’ll always be able to tell compelling stories.

Blog

How Tome's Head of Machine Learning, Sarah Sachs, Thinks About Generative AI and Eng Collaboration

Meet Archana Sankar: Product Engineering Leader at Tome

Tome Pro: For limitless creation and sharing

Craft your next great idea.